


Watery Grave

by cmonlauraweremarriednow



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-03-06 08:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13407417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmonlauraweremarriednow/pseuds/cmonlauraweremarriednow
Summary: Mulder comforts Scully in the aftermath of Donnie Pfaster





	Watery Grave

**Author's Note:**

> Post _Irresistible_

Mulder slowly pushes the door open, graveyard fog curling around his ankles.

She had promised him she was fine. She didn’t need his help. She could do it by herself.

“Scully?”

But he had seen her face when he’d suggested a bath to soothe her wounds. Watched her panic when the tub started to fill. Felt her flinch at the breaking rainstorm sound of a starting showerhead compromise. Helped her inch her clothes over her tender purpling skin.

She was fine.

“Are you okay?”

He finds her huddled in the corner of the shower with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her tiny shell of a body is shaking, the foreshock of an earthquake before the ground gashes in two and swallows everything in its gaping jaws. Her fair skin is marred by patches of encrusted blood, stray strands of hair matted to her face.

“Scully…”

His face crumbles, his heart following close behind, the tombstone he’d helped Maggie Scully choose for her daughter settling in his stomach. This was his fault. He failed her. Again. She’s his partner; he’s supposed to have her back, protect her. But instead he does nothing but hurt her. Everything that she’s gone through in the past two years has been a direct result of her work with the X-Files. With him.

Tooms.

Duane Berry.

And now Pfaster.

He’s always too late. Soon enough to keep her alive, but not soon enough to save her. The Dana Scully that had walked into his basement office all those months ago was dead. Five feet and three inches of bright eyes, shy smiles, and fierce will buried under six feet of government conspiracies, mountaintop abductions, and twisted alien corpses.

Mulder strips down to his boxers, crossing his arms to pull his t-shirt over his head and kicking his jeans off his ankles into the corner. He winces when steps into the stream; the water scalds his skin, red patches blooming across his muscled back. He slides down the hard tile next to her, sliding a tentative hand across her back. The whispered refrain of her name slides across his lips again.

A ragged sob heaves from her chest. “I…I…can’t Mulder…I tried…”

He pulls her into his arms, draping his body around hers. Goosebumps shatter her skin despite the heat of the water sluicing over them. He can’t tell where her tears stop and the water begins.

“Hey, I know…I know you did.” Mulder rests his head against hers. “I know.”

He runs a hand along her face, loosening the dried blood at her chin where her scraped skin had darkened to a blackened crimson. Scarlet-tinged rivulets pool around them before swirling down the drain.

“I…I can’t move…” Her voice barely registers over the roar of the water.  

“Shhh, you don’t have to. I’m right here. I got you, baby,” the term of endearment slipping out before he could catch it. “I’m here.”

She quakes against his chest and he can feel the shift of the earth beneath them, the cracking of her meticulously erected walls, the rumble of impending collapse. The ground gashes; she breaks again. The jagged pieces of her rubble crush the air from his lungs and entomb him. He often dreamt of burying himself in her, but not like this. Never this. He tightens his hold on her, gathering her pieces in his arms, wanting nothing more than to put her back together again. He broke her; he has to fix her. 

Murmuring nonsense into her skin, he holds her until the water runs cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make me the happiest clam in all the sea  
> You can also follow me on Tumblr [@realmofextremepossibility!](http://realmofextremepossibility.tumblr.com)


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